


had the shiniest wheels (now they’re rusting)

by piecesofgold



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Abrupt Ending, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, F/M, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:41:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26805286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piecesofgold/pseuds/piecesofgold
Summary: Anya runs. Dmitry follows.(repost; unfinished and discontinued.)
Relationships: Dimitri | Dmitry/Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 & Broadway)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	had the shiniest wheels (now they’re rusting)

**Author's Note:**

> hi i deleted this during a hating-everything-i-write episode and lost steam with it but here’s what it Was anyway ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Anya’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing for the past fifteen miles.

It’s a tinny, irritating noise that burrows into his skull, and no amount of leaning his head against the open window is making the ache go away.

“You planning to answer that?” Dmitry finally breaks, somewhere near Columbus.

“Nope,” she answers flatly, eyes fixed on the road.

“Could you at least turn it off?”

“Do it yourself.”

Too tired to properly argue, he grabs her cell from the dashboard. There’s a cluster of missed calls on the screen; her sisters, her brother. Dmitry has no doubt his own probably looks the same with Marfa, Polly and Dunya, had he not had the foresight to turn it off when they left.

Anya’s lights up again with a call from Tatiana.

Dmitry declines and shuts it off.

“We're losing light,” she comments, hours later.

Dmitry cracks an eye open. “Want me to take over?”

Anya’s knuckles tighten on the wheel, worrying her lip. “There’s a rest stop at the next exit?” She poses it like a question. “Think there’s a motel.”

Right. Sleep is something they should factor into - whatever it is they’re doing.

Dmitry clears his throat. “Go halves on the room.”

Anya just nods.

(She doesn’t need to go halves on anything, but. They haven’t exactly discussed who is funding this excursion and Dmitry would like to feel as if he’s contributing something.)

They pull into a gas station first. Anya shuts off the engine, the only noise in the car is their breathing.

“You haven’t asked,” she says quietly.

Dmitry sighs. “Do you want me to?” He watches her knees shift under the steering wheel.

“No,” Anya decides, glancing at him.

“Okay then.”

There’s a long, strange moment of just looking at one another, the absurdity of the situation weighed in the space between their seats.

Dmitry looks away first, opening the passenger door.

He forgets how cold Ohio gets in April, yet another flaw in the poor choices made tonight. He’s wearing a dress shirt with a blazer and trousers, while Anya’s in the spare pair of flats that had been tucked into her purse to exchange for her heels and a flowery teal dress held in a belt. Hours in her car have creased them both.

There’s no department store nearby to buy clothes, so he settles for grabbing granola bars and bottles of water in the convenience store while Anya fills her tank, tosses in the toiletries neither of them were in the mind to pick up before they booked it out of Pittsburgh. 

Out of habit, he buys packets of hard candy too, trained by years of Maria’s sweet tooth and Anya swiping pieces from them during movie nights.

How far nights like those are now.

Dmitry forces the thought away. Anya’s behind him at the register now, watching his items being rung up as she fiddles with her credit card.

“Gonna have to find a Walmart, unless we’re planning to sleep in these for…” he pauses.

Anya doesn’t offer him a time limit, but she sighs. “Tomorrow. Need a map, too.”

Okay, so she does have a plan. “Got a destination in mind?”

Her smile doesn’t meet her eyes. “Maybe.”

He doesn’t ask. If there’s anything he knows about the Romanova women, they like an air of mystery. Maria used to drive him up the wall with it, but Anya’s more subtle.

It might be the only subtle thing about her.

* * *

Despite the previous agreement, Anya pays for the room herself. Dmitry’s too tired to fight her on it - he’ll get the next one. Wherever the next one is.

The receptionist doesn’t give their rumpled appearance or plastic bags full of supplies a second look, just hands over the room key. It looks about as to be expected; yellowing walls, suspicious stains on the green carpet. Neither of them have the courage to peek into the bathroom.

There’s one outstanding issue, though.

“Oh.” Anya blinks. “She said it was a twin.”

Dmitry tosses his blazer over the double bed, not meeting her eyes. “I don’t mind if you don’t.”

(They’ve shared beds before, sleepovers and camping trips and the memorable occasion when he and Maria were at college and the only sleeping option Anya had was to share with him on his tiny dorm bed.

That was the second to last time he’d seen her before tonight. Part of him wishes it had been the last time, because maybe then he wouldn't have thought about it on a constant loop during moments he definitely shouldn't have been thinking about it. Or her. Or them.)

Anya says nothing, slipping into the bathroom.

Dmitry rakes a hand through his hair. He should turn his phone on, should reassure Maria and Marfa to stop them sending out a search party.

Should call the person who’s supposed to be the most important to him, but he doubts she wants to hear from him.

Dmitry’s under the covers when Anya finally emerges, and he averts his eyes as she slips in beside him. If it can be called that - she’s practically hanging off the edge, back facing him, the skin of her neck illuminated by the dim lamp.

It's not as awkward as it should be, despite the stretch of absent years between them it took to get here. It doesn't make them strangers, doesn't erase every moment they spent together because Maria is his best friend and Anya - Anya was the annoying baby sister who stubbornly tagged along with everything Dmitry and Maria did.

Until she wasn't, and they were almost friends, and he ruined it.

Dmitry does want to ask. He’s wanted to ask since he found her hours and hours ago at her car after running from the party meant for her, hyperventilating and half hysterical.

_I can’t stay here, I can’t. Don’t ask me to._

_No. No, I - I’m coming with you._

He hadn’t even hesitated.

“Shut up.”

Dmitry startles. “What?”

“Can hear your brain from here,” Anya mumbles, rolling on her back.

“Wasn’t aware that was one of your superpowers.”

“Persuasion too, apparently.” She goes quiet. “Dmitry -”

“Don’t.” He shuts his eyes.

“Am I allowed to ask why?” Anya asks quietly.

Dmitry huffs. “No.”

She pulls the itchy comforter up to her chin, sighing. “We can go into the city tomorrow,” she whispers. “Pick up - whatever.”

Her voice wavers, and Dmitry doesn’t need to look at her to know there are tears in her eyes.

He fixes his eyes to the ceiling. “Tomorrow.”

* * *

Anya’s hair keeps falling in front of her eyes. Dmitry can tell it’s irritating her by the hard line of her mouth every time she pushes it back, huffing through her nose. The only hair tie she’d had on her wrist broke in her haste to put it up in their scramble to get out of the room after they had woken up ten minutes before checkout time.

The sound of the elastic snapping had made Dmitry turn around, half dressed. Anya met his gaze in a startled look, broken hair tie sat between her fingers. They just looked at one another, as if waiting for the other to declare what an awful idea this was and they’re going home.

Dmitry grabbed the plastic bag of toiletries. “We should go.”

Anya blinked. “Yeah.” She paused, though. “Hey, think fast.”

He barely had time to straighten up before she threw her car keys at him.

The radio has a terrible sound system, some sad country song crooning over the static every few seconds. Dmitry’s fingers thoughtlessly tap at the steering wheel.

Anya switches it off.

* * *

The diner is a sterile place full of glass and stainless steel, with a waitress who flirts shamelessly with Dmitry and brings him a free slice of pie. He thanks her awkwardly, burning under Anya’s bemused gaze.

“I’ll share,” he offers, already slicing the giant wedge in half.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Anya states, but she still steals a bite from the waitress' token of affection.

It feels too normal for what they are, wearing yesterday’s creased clothes and acting like they don’t have ninety missed calls between them on phones they still haven’t looked at. Anya’s nails are bitten down to the quick and Dmitry thinks he might have frown lines permanently etched onto his forehead.

They’re quiet over the scraping of cutlery on glassware, picking at the last of the food. Anya keeps glancing back at the car, impatience radiating off her.

“We’re going into the city today?” Dmitry asks her.

Anya flickers back to him, nodding. “Clothes first,” she confirms.

He hums. “Probably shouldn’t keep up the runaway appearance.”

Her eyes narrow, foot pinching his under the table. “I think we’re past that, Dima.”

It shouldn’t be this easy to talk to her, shouldn’t make him feel the way it does when she calls him that. Not even Maria calls him that, not even -

“You‘re buying em, by the way,” he says instead.

That not-quite-smile again. “Just don’t pick out any damn khakis,” she tells him.

Dmitry steals the last of her pancake. “Deal.”

* * *

Rhubarb-and-Custard candy used to mean falling asleep on the Romanov couch and heated arguments with Tatiana over who was the best Marvel character, camping trips that always resulted in Anya curled against his sleeping bag for warmth and Maria’s tilted head at them.

Dmitry doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to even look at one again without seeing the colour of Anya’s hair or hearing her out-of-tune humming.

As promised, he gets the next room in the city, twin beds rather than a double this time. Dmitry starts to feel somewhat human again after a shower under lukewarm water and pulling on one of the t-shirts from the Target bags. Anya’s twisting her hair into a damp braid, frowning at the map splayed across the bed she’s chosen.

Red rims around her eyes tell him she must have spoken to her family.

“Hey,” Dmitry says softly. “Should we have that talk now?”

Anya levels him with a look that’s a clear no.

“Not that,” he hastens. “Just - what’s the plan, Anya?”

She won’t meet his eyes now, finger pad running over the edge of the map. “I don’t really know,” she mutters. “It’s more like…” she trails off.

“Like what?”

Anya’s breath shudders, legs drawn up. “Like I want to not be myself for a while.”

Dmitry doesn’t ask who she wants to be, because he’s missed enough versions of her already.

And she’s not the only one with something to run from.

“Okay,” he says instead. “So let's not be.”

* * *

Not being themselves apparently entails getting dinner from a food cart and watching the state soccer game. Jitteriness compels them outside as twilight sets in, labels of their new jackets tickling their necks.

“Can’t remember the last time I was here,” Anya says after a long stretch of silence. Lights glitter up ahead, shouts from the bar echoing to them.

“Me neither,” Dmitry admits. Doesn’t say he can’t even remember the last time he wasn’t anywhere but New York.

Anya frowns up at him. “Didn’t you and Maria take that Midwest trip after Senior year?”

He cringes. “That I don’t want to remember,” he groans, grimacing as if a ten year old hangover is still turning his stomach.

Her face lights up at that. “I treasured those drunk voicemails for months,” she tells him, only for the grin to slip a moment later.

They’ve stopped walking, and she looks like she’s about to apologise to him for bringing it up, but - it’s fine. They can be on good terms, even if those terms are built on silence. They’re fine.

Dmitry blinks, and the moment passes.

Anya’s eyes stay on the lights ahead.

“Where to tomorrow?” He asks instead.

“You don’t want to stay a little longer?”

“Place isn’t known for entertainment.”

“Maybe not.” Anya’s tongue is peaking between her teeth. “But I could still go for Buckeye.”

There. Subject changed.

“Lead the way, Romanova.”

* * *

Maria had given him a look that bordered on withering when he’d asked if Anya had to stay with them.

“Grow up, Mitya,” she said. “Give her a chance for once.”

“She hates me,” he reminded her, tossing a baseball over to the tiny kitchen table they have a hard time keeping tidy.

Maria caught it one handed, not looking up from her laptop and littered assignment papers. “She’s sixteen and lonely,” she counters. “It’s two days, stop being an idiot.”

“You’re standing at the murder trial.”

“Looking forward to it.”

He knew he was being unfair, even then. Because Maria was right - Olga and Tatiana have one another, Maria had him, Alexei would be suffocated by their parents most of his life, and Anya had no one.

She’s a spitfire, even just walking beside him with melted Buckeye chocolate on the side of her lip. Talks a mile a minute about anything other than everything she won’t, because this is how they work. Despite her sisters knowing looks and the fight they had the last time they saw one another, they’ll talk around it.

They’ll pretend none of it happened, and Dmitry will run away with her anyway.

* * *

Sunlight glints in the rearview mirror while they’re on the Interstate, hum of the engine accompanying Anya’s soft snoring. Dmitry rests one hand on the wheel, other on the gear shift, rolling his shoulders to ease tense muscles that are at odds with his sense of calm.

He’s been driving since dawn, on the losing side of Anya’s rock-paper-scissors when he’d finally coaxed her out from under the covers. She’s been asleep since they left Ohio in the distance, barely stayed awake long enough to eat the breakfast he bought at the gas station.

“S’it my shift?” Anya’s mumbling now, squinting.

“It’s okay, I’m good,” Dmitry says honestly. He likes being behind the wheel, the minute sense of control it gives him.

“You’re the best,” she says, still half asleep. Dmitry’s grip tightens. “Where are we?”

“Indiana. Got somewhere in mind?”

Anya shrugs, eyes closing again. “Anywhere you want, Dima.”

She’s asleep before she can hear his sharp exhale.

* * *

He makes a call at a stop point in Lafayette.

Anya’s stretching her legs, making friends with a few long-distance truckers while Dmitry sits on the hood of the car, trying not to marvel at how people draw to her like moths to a flame. Even when she’s not doing it deliberately, they’re captured in her beacon.

It’s a trait he’s come to know well.

Before he fully knows what he’s doing, Dmitry’s turning his cell on for the first time in three days and pressing the first missed call to pop up

“I am gonna kill you six ways from Sunday,” Maria informs him after the second ring.

Dmitry huffs. “Can I get a rain check on that?”

Maria can’t seem to decide whether to be angry or relieved. “Where are you?”

He glances back over at Anya, sat at a picnic bench and smiling at a woman with a backpack almost as big as her. “Don’t think I’m supposed to tell you that.”

“Do not make me use Find My Friends.”

“Mashka.”

“Mitya,” she admonishes, then sighs. “At least tell me you’re both fine.”

Dmitry breathes out a phantom pain in his chest. “As we can be. I think -” he pauses.

“You think what?”

“She just needs time.”

Maria is quiet for a long moment. “The pair of you,” she despairs softly. “I always thought…” she trails off, and Dmitry can’t decide if he’s glad that she doesn’t finish.

“Will you tell the others to call off the search party?”

“I’ll try. And, ah. You should know - Kat went back to New York last night.”

Dmitry shuts his eyes. “Right.”

“Want to tell me what’s going on there?”

“I don’t -” he stops, grinding his teeth. “Do you want me to tell Anya anything?”

Maria sighs. “Just - be careful, both of you. Come home soon.”

Dmitry isn’t sure he knows what home is anymore.

Anya has a knowing look on her face as she makes her way back. “Maria?”

“Yeah,” he confirms, accepting the offered can of Coke she’s holding out. Their fingertips press together briefly on the cool aluminum. “She says be careful.”

Anya’s eyebrow arches. “Me or you?”

“Both.”

Feet scuffle on the gravel, a smile hidden in a can.

* * *

They drive straight through Indiana and avoid Missouri altogether. Dmitry tries not to be disappointed - he hasn’t been to St Louis since his mother was alive.

Always the drive back, he supposes.

He guesses they’re headed for Chicago, doesn’t bother questioning it. If Anya has a path in mind, he’d rather follow blindly.

As an apology for sleeping most of the day, Anya gets them a proper hotel room in Vermilion County and buys him dinner, wrinkling her nose at his choice of steak topping while she picks at her pasta.

It’s a double bed, with pillows that aren’t yellowed with cigarette smoke and clean sheets. A dream compared to what they started with.

“Just don’t steal the covers this time,” Anya warns with no bite, but she won’t meet his eyes.

There’s a restlessness growing between them, knees bouncing and fingers tapping. At one point they pass each other in the bathroom doorway, Anya holding a towel around her, her skin pink and damp.

It’s a rigid second of being pressed to close and unintentionally counting the freckles scattered along her collarbone, over her shoulders. Throat dry, Dmitry mutters an apology, locking the door with a jackhammer in his chest.

It’s like recoiling around an open wound, having to force through every complicated moment. And they already have so much scar tissue between them.

* * *

The digital clock on the nightstand glows four-twenty-seven am. Dmitry has been checking it at fifteen minute intervals, waiting for sleep to come. He can hear Anya beside him, breathing indicating she’s awake, too. But he wants the illusion they’re going to sleep, doesn’t want to disturb the quiet. He keeps his eyes firmly shut and imagines sheep jumping over a fence.

Sheets rustle, Anya’s voice piercing through the dark. “Dmitry?”

He cracks an eye open. “Yeah?”

“Tell me why.”

“Why what?”

“Don’t play dumb,” she says lowly. He can feel her moving closer, the shock of warmth that comes with her pressed against him. “If I’m the one who ran out on my own - thing, why did you follow?”

After the tears in her eyes when they last saw each other, the venom in their words contradicted the flowers that had been gripped in her hands. Everything they’ve buried.

_The pair of you. I always thought..._

“Well, I wasn’t gonna leave you,” Dmitry offers lamely into the dark.

“Dmitry.” Anya’s tone is pointed, almost sharp. She knows him better than that.

He lets the silence stretch out, the ceiling fan and their breathing the only noise in the room. The curtains aren’t closed properly, and he imagines moonlight reflecting in Anya’s blue eyes, if he could only turn to look at her.

“Katya and I are getting divorced.”

As soon as Dmitry says it, his stomach knots. He hasn’t - they haven’t told anyone yet. Not even Maria. Hasn’t said it out loud in the months they’ve been separated.

They could already be divorced, for all he knows. He’d signed the papers before he left New York. Katya hadn’t said anything about signing them when they were in the Romanov residence, but then they were still trying to save face, keep up appearances.

_I'm not blind, Dmitry. We've been playing pretend for years._

No one wants to hear about divorce at an engagement party.

Anya hasn’t reacted, save for her hand curling around his elbow. She doesn’t say anything, thumb rubbing circles into his skin. He thinks he should take the fact she hasn’t kicked him out of bed as a good sign, but something tells him it’s her own guilt that prevents her from breaking their strained silent agreement.

Two liars, side by side, still lying to each other. It’s almost poetic.

* * *

Their stay in Vermilion County is suddenly extended when Anya gets sick.

It comes on seemingly out of nowhere, but in hindsight Dmitry should have known something was wrong when she stopped picking at her hard candies three days ago. All the rest stop food and endless driving and repressed anxiety has finally caught up with them.

By the third day of Anya spending most of the day in the bathroom, Dmitry’s about ready to haul her to the emergency room.

“No,” she lashes before he can even finish his sentence.

“Anya -”

“It’s fine,” she insists weakly. “I’ll be fine.”

Dmitry stops pushing. Anya hates being babied almost as much as she hates being told what to do.

Tylenol and bread is all she seems to be able to keep down, miserably tearing at it from the bed he’s been kicked out of because she refuses to get him sick, never mind how many times he reminds her that he got his flu shot.

“I’m sorry,” she says one night, quiet in the dark.

Dmitry shakes his head. “‘S’fine. Dealt with enough of Maria’s hangovers through college, remember.”

None of them were as frightening as when Maria had pneumonia during their final year and made him swear on his parents graves not to tell her family, but he’s not about to tell Anya that.

He gets to know a few of their hotel neighbours at breakfast, while he’s filling up plates for himself and Anya even though he knows she won’t eat it. There’s Jerry and Rashida, an older couple who took a shining to Anya the second they met her in the breakfast line. From what Dmitry recalls of their chatter, they’re visiting their daughter and new grandchild.

It seems to be a matter of great concern the second time Anya doesn’t make it down.

“Your wife has already left?” Rashida asks him gently, unknowingly knocking the wind out of Dmitry.

He reels, opening his mouth to ask what she’s talking about when it hits him that she means _Anya_ , not Katya.

It’s them he remembers that he hasn’t taken off his wedding ring since New York. Had forgotten he’d even slipped it on before heading to the airport.

Strange how easily it fit back there, after months gone.

Dmitry somehow manages to find his voice while Rashida is frowning at him. “I, ah, no, she - Anya’s still here. Flu,” he stumbles.

Rashida makes a sympathetic noise and pats his arm.

Rug pulled from underneath him, Dmitry flees back to their room.

Anya’s asleep, piled under fresh sheets. They definitely owe housekeeping a heavy tip after this.

Her fever seems to have broken, but she’s still a little delirious. Or at least that’s what Dmitry chooses to tell himself when Anya tugs at his arm until he lies next to her.

“‘M sorry,” she mumbles again.

Dmitry tries not to sigh. “It’s fi-”

“Not that.” Her head is half buried in the duvet, voice muffled. “Sorry ‘bout you an’ Kat.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, Anyok.” It slips out without meaning to. “It happens.”

“But it was real, though.” Anya pokes him in the side.

Dmitry frowns. “I know it was.”

She doesn’t talk for so long, he thinks she’s fallen back to sleep until her breath shudders.

“Me and Gleb,” she says hollowly, “that’s not real.”

Dmitry’s talking before he can think to hold his tongue. “He’s an asshole, Anya.”

Even that’s too light a word for what Vaganov is.

She snorts. “I know.” Curling up tighter, her forehead presses into his arm. “Sometimes I think you were my last real thing.”

* * *

Dmitry would love to say they were drunk. Admittedly, he’d had half a beer and two shots of whiskey, but not enough to make his head swim.

Anya was the one who’d persuaded them to join the drinking a few blocks over. For Maria’s sake, she’d insisted.

“You work too hard, Mashka,” she sighed, closing her sister's laptop.

Ordinarily, Dmitry would disagree and argue with her, but after a night of having to sleep on an air mattress while she was in his bed, he wasn’t in the mood.

Maria looked at him, unsure. “If you want?”

Dmitry shrugged, pulling his hat down on her head. “You deserve a break. Have some fun for a change.”

“You’re watching Anya,” she warned, and he rolled his eyes.

He lost both of them within ten minutes. Maria started chatting up one of the Classics students, and Dmitry knew he wouldn’t be seeing her again until morning. At least one of them was getting some.

Anya found him, ironically. Thum of the bass inside echoing on the pavement, she approached where he was sitting on the hood of someone's car, breathing deeply.

“Maria said to find you,” she informed flatly.

Dmitry barely looked at her. “I’m not your babysitter, Shvybs.”

Anya’s eyes flashed, her jaw set cold. She hated him calling her that. “I didn’t ask you to be,” she snapped, glancing at the bottled water in his hand. “Lightweight.”

“Juvenile,” he fired back.

She huffed and rubbed her arms. It wasn’t that chilly, but she was only wearing a dress - one of Tatiana’s old ones, by the looks of it. Dmitry wondered if he should be offering his jacket.

Instead, something made him ask, “Are you okay?”

Anya’s expression mimicked that of a startled owl. “Yeah. Yes.” She cleared her throat. “I just - I missed Mashka, is all. It’s been too quiet at home.”

She glanced back at the noise, uncharacteristically solemn. Dmitry wasn’t used to her like this, especially not with him. Anastasia will grin and jibe, but has always kept herself rolled up tight as a bandage.

There is a loneliness around her he’s only acknowledged a handful of times, in those pocket universes when they were the only ones left awake, insecurities and vulnerabilities raw between them. Whenever they sat alone on the Romanov’s big couch, something made him want to reach for her.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, eyes suddenly focused on him.

“The paper I’m never going to finish,” he lied, because _You_ seemed like a bad answer.

Anya nodded, chewing her lip. “I can sleep on the air bed tonight.”

“Why?” He reflexively protested.

“You don’t want me here,” she said matter of factly, and it might be the saddest thing she’d ever said to him.

“I didn’t say-“ 

“You did,” she stopped him. “You’ve been saying it since you were ten and pushed me off the trampoline.”

“Only because you kept shouting over every word I said,” he reminded her, then quietened.

Maybe it was the distance that made him half forget all the petty resentment they built up over the last decade. They were not children anymore, no matter how much they bickered like ones.

“I don’t actually hate you, you know.”

Anya’s eyes snapped back to him, bewildered. Not one inch of her relaxed, but her voice was steady as she straightened up. “You’re unfair,” she declared.

“So are you,” he couldn’t resist biting back.

She squinted, but her shoulders slumped. “I don’t really hate you, either,” she said quietly, reaching to tap his knee with two fingers. Dmitry had taken her hand and held it like a ladder rung.

The air changed, goosebumps popping over skin that weren’t entirely from the cold.

They must have been drunk. After all, why else would they have done that? Why else would he have asked, sitting on the hood of a strangers car, “We could - head back, if you want?”

And why else would Anya have nodded?

Obviously they were drunk when Dmitry pressed Anya back against the apartment door and kissed her. When she kissed him back.

Her tongue had tasted of cheap wine and sugar rims, but her hands were steady under his shirt and her voice rang clear when she told him to touch her.

Of course they were drunk, because Anya was Maria’s sister and Maria was his best friend.

Of course they were drunk, except they weren’t.

* * *

It isn’t hard to move into someone else’s life if you do it a little at a time.

That’s not how he’d met Maria, because the easiest thing in the world to ten years olds is making friends. But Dmitry was wary for a long time, because what could she want from him? Everyone wants something, and what could the daughter of the richest family in Pittsburgh hope to gain from a boy whose world consisted of a group home and the three girls he’d glued himself to?

Maria somehow disarmed them all, though. She fitted herself with Marfa, Polly and Dunya like a missing glove. They used to tease her about slumming it with them just to see her face go red to the roots of her hair.

“It’s not like that,” she’d insist, pulling up blades of grass between her fingers. “You’re my _friends_.”

They stopped teasing her from that point. Maria Romanova became a fixture in their lives, and that was that.

What Dmitry hadn’t banked on was her sisters insistence, too. It might have been Anya’s jealousy at first, because god forbid anyone come between the Little Pair. She’d snap and he’d press and more than once it ended with bruises on shins and shoulders.

Somewhere down the line, it became less about all the ways they could irritate one another to silently looking for ways to just stay in the same room.

Anya moved into his life bit by bit, without acknowledgement it was happening. Curled beside him on a camping trip when she was thirteen because she was afraid of the dark; crying on her birthday when he was the only one to see and it was the first time he’d hugged her, awkward hands on her back.

Or when Anya would slip into the restaurant he worked at to scrape money together for college. She’d sit on the bench, chin resting in her hands, watching him work in easy silence.

No one would tell her to leave because she’s a Romanov, and Dmitry would feel her eyes drag over him like a comb. Sometimes she’d stay his whole shift, eating the chef’s leftovers and doing her schoolwork. One time she fell asleep, and Dmitry had to poke her awake to ask if she wanted a ride home.

It was never unsettling. It became a strange, unspoken secret they shared in those private moments, because they just _knew_.

It was weighted looks and small smiles and tilted heads that translated as _you okay_? It was her seeking him out at a party neither of them wanted to be at; a gravitational pull hooking them together.

Dmitry wore his loneliness like armour, but Anya hid hers in pretty dresses and loud laughter and smiles that could light up a whole room.

How strange they recognised it so quickly in each other.

Perhaps that one weekend was the boiling point, but it was never just that. It’s fragments, scattered across years until they were made to look it in the eye.

He wonders how much would be different now if they’d been honest in the first place.

* * *

Dmitry makes her pull over in Kentland under the guise of using the laundromat. Anya has been insisting she’s fine since they left the hotel, but he still doesn’t trust how pale she is.

It’s quiet, save for the washing machines rattle and simultaneous hum of the dryer. Fluorescent lights flicker in the still early morning light as he stretches across the bench and watches Anya methodically load and unload the washer, watches her hands brace on the machine like it’s the only thing tethering her to the ground.

The whole place smells of cheap detergent, the kind used in college laundry blocks and the kind he’d used to wash his sheets three times in one night after Anya was gone. Some symbolic way of washing away that weekend and all the secrets they’d kept.

It lingered, though. Over that day and everything after. His life, his marriage. A dent he could never pop out.

Something tells him she couldn’t, either.

“We should go to St. Louis.”

Dmitry blinks, tipping his head back to look at her. “Think we missed that exit a while back.”

Anya shrugs, her knee jumping. He wants to reach over and steady it.

“Your mom was from there, right?” She asks.

That almost makes him sit up. “What?”

Anya frowns down at him. “You always used to - you told Maria you wanted to go, because you haven’t since you were a kid.”

She’s right and wrong. “I didn’t tell Maria that,” he says softly.

He told _her_ that, sweat cooling on their bodies and indents on his biceps the shape of Anya’s nails, her fingers threading through his hair.

“You never told us you were from Missouri,” she’d laughed.

“cause I’m not,” Dmitry protested, failing to hide a grin. “Pittsburgh born and bread, baby.” He’d leaned down and kissed the giggle from her lips, encouraging her thighs apart.

“Take me with you,” Anya whimpered when he rocked inside her again. He could only nod; he would have done anything she asked in that moment.

Dmitry watches a blush rise up her neck, eyes widening a fraction at the memory, and wonders how hard she’s worked to edit them in her mind.

Anya clears her throat, tugging at the sleeves of her jumper. Dmitry can’t tell if it’s the horrible lighting or the remnants of her flu that’s making her look exhausted, but she’s still avoiding his gaze.

“On the way back, then,” she says softly, head bowed.

Neither of them point out that they don’t know when that is.

* * *

Chicago gets cold fast, so Dmitry’s not entirely sure why going to a bar long after the sun has set seemed like a good idea. But Anya‘s been cooped up for a week, so he lets her have it.

Not being themselves, and all that.

Beer makes him maudlin, so he keeps stealing sips of Anya’s tequila until she elbows him in the side and orders another glass.

“Don’t get many of your type passin’ through here,” the bartender - Nadia, according to her badge - comments, sliding the glass into Anya’s hand.

“Our type?” Dmitry repeats. Anya’s eyes have narrowed, calculated.

“Pennsylvanians,” Nadia explains. “Escaping the East Coast or something?”

“Or something,” Anya says flatly, empty ring-finger tapping twice on the bartop. Dmitry reflexedly rubs over his own, not missing the look that passes over Nadia’s face when she sees his ring.

He doesn’t know why he suddenly can’t take it off. It’s not like he’s worn it in months, anyway.

So he drinks Anya’s tequila, watches her light up at the haggard looking strangers who amble next to them, and somehow gets pulled into a conversation about storms.

Ida, who’s a climatology professor in North Dakota; Mason, an engineer from Michigan who storm-spots and collects data for fun; and Sage, a doctoral student from Nigeria loaning her battered Jeep for the expedition.

“Storm chasing,” Ida sighs, “is an old folks sport. Most of its sittin’ on your ass and checking data, then every so often running after storms that fizz out like a can of soda that’s been lying in the sun too long. It’s deeply boring, deeply patient work.”

“Any time you want her to stop,” Sage, the youngest in the group, chimes in apologetically.

Dmitry leans forward, intrigued. “You all headin’ east?”

Sage nods eagerly, curls bouncing. “Early tornado season, I’m doing a thesis on their formation and sort of got -” she waves a hand at where Anya is hanging off of Ida’s words, “pulled in.”

Mason tells them a story about his car getting struck by lightning in Tennessee last year, and maybe it’s the tequila getting to his head or Anya’s shoulder pressed into his, but Dmitry can see it. See himself behind the wheel, facing a storm head on, sparks bouncing off his windshield and bursting his eardrums.

Anya leans back into him while the other three fall into their own bickering. “Could see you doing that.”

Dmitry looks sideways at her, close enough to see the green flecks of the blue in her eyes. “Arguing?”

She shoves him lightly. “Storm chasing.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.” Anya tips her head back. “Think you'd be good at it.”

 _I chased you_ , Dmitry doesn’t reply, shrugging instead.

Anya’s as much a storm as he needs.

Hours melt together as the drinks keeps flowing. Sage gets the hiccups rambling about isobars and the Doppler effect and other words that don’t make any sense to Dmitry. Ida and Mason get into a very heated debate about radars, and at some point they’re all dragged up into dancing to AC/DC.

Anya’s hand is in his, and she’s laughing with her head thrown back, and it just - stops him in his tracks.

He can’t blame the alcohol this time when his fingers curl around the soft fabric of Anya’s shirt and she’s lifting her head to meet Dmitry’s eyes, knowing what he’s going to do a second before he does.

Dmitry licks tequila out of Anya's mouth, chases every last drop. His hand slides under her shirt and he just wants to sink into the warm noise she makes.

Sage is cackling at them and Mason is wolf-whistling, but Dmitry doesn’t hear them over Anya’s panting and his own heart racing, stupidity and adrenaline all at once.

“We should -” Anya says hoarsely, fingers twisted in his hair.

Dmitry nods, ignoring Ida shaking her head at them as if they’re teenagers. “We should.”

It’s hardly the first of their terrible ideas.


End file.
